One-man show's star nervous ahead of Gaiety opening
The star of a critically acclaimed Broadway hit – I Am My Own Wife – said he has no idea how Irish audiences will react when he steps on to the Gaiety Theatre’s stage tomorrow night.
Despite scooping a Tony Award for his extensive role in his unusual one-man show, Jefferson Mays, admitted he still feels nerves when the curtain rises.
“In all honesty I am still terrified in the pit of my stomach and I still suffer butterflies. But as long as the nerves are there I will keep doing it,” he said.
On his new Irish audience, the US actor admitted: “I have absolutely no idea how they will react – I don’t know. I have heard audiences at the Dublin Theatre Festival are very smart and generous,” Mays said.
The award-winning play ’I Am My Own Wife’ explores the true story of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, a well-known transvestite and antiques dealer, who survived two of the most oppressive regimes in the past century – the Nazis and the Communists.
Mays said: “I had never done a one person show in my life but in this I play about 35 to 37 characters, and a singularly eccentric person who survived two of the most repressive regimes.
“It is a survivor’s tale.”
The play is written from the point of view of the author, Doug Wright. In the play, he travels from New York to Berlin to interview Charlotte and is enchanted by her accounts of her oppressive father and meetings with a homophobic SS commander.
“I got a strange phone call from Doug Wright, a friend, who asked would I be interested in a play that hasn’t been written yet about a 65-year-old gay east German transvestite. I said it sounds like my next logical step,” Mays said.
The US actor, who was born in New England in Connecticut, said he met with Wright in the mountains of Utah at the Sundance Theatre Laboratory to listen to the transcripts of interviews he had conducted with Mahlsdorf over a three-year period.
Mays said the play was not originally going to be a one-man show but he said new voices started to emerge for each of the characters which led to its current state.
“I vocally differentiate the parts. I tried to be as economical as possible as I didn’t want to use a trunk of costumes and hats,” he said.
Mays said he was delighted with the scores of awards the play has picked up from a Drama Desk Award to an Obie Award and a Lucille Lortel Award.
Outside the US, the actor said the play has only been performed in Poland, which had experienced both the regimes incorporated in the play.
Ahead of tomorrow night’s official Gaiety opening, Mays added: “This theatre is extraordinary, this is the oldest playhouse I have ever played it. It is the most beautiful I’ve seen and it seems to be quite intimate.”
After the play’s run at the theatre from October 5-12, as one of the many shows included in the extensive programme of the Dublin Theatre Festival, Mays travels on to London for a stint in the West End.
